


Redwater

by StAnni



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Angst, Betrayal, Explosives, F/M, Guns, Heroes, Past Relationship(s), Ungoogleable notions, Villains, Voilence, hand-wavy science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-20 14:47:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16557779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StAnni/pseuds/StAnni
Summary: The terrifying truth is, however, that this Selina, callous and calculating– he recognises her too.  It is still his Selina, but it is the Selina he abandoned on the island, the Selina who, with all the hate and disappointment in her heart – he could no longer bear to be with.  It is still his Selina.  A bitter sadness swells inside of him, threatening to overwhelm him.  He breathes out, raggedly “How can you not care, Selina?  These people…”She catches him, quick and even “Your people, Bruce.  Not mine.  Mine are still in the camps.  So really, why should I care?”





	Redwater

**Author's Note:**

> Zero knowledge of science, chemistry or plumbing.

She is sitting in the interrogation room with her hands cuffed on the table. Harvey wanted to cuff her feet, he would have duct-taped her to the wall if he had his way. The four of them, Bruce, Alfred, Harvey and Gordon watch her through the two-way mirror. 

It’s been two years since the explosions started. At first they were sparse, too random to connect. It’s only recently that a re-hash, with the limited resources they had available, traced one substance found at every scene - a liquid explosive known colloquially in the old Narrows as “redwater”. Gordon and Bruce dug up seven redwater labs, seedy, dangerous ad hoc spaces with disenfranchised, scared and badly burnt chemist chained to the walls, churning out redwater as if their lives depended on it – because, naturally, it did.   
A few jaws where broken, legs busted – but not before all of them, identified one Selina Kyle as their main raison d’etre.

She looks small, and younger than her twenty five years, her hoodie drawn loose over her curls. But she doesn’t look scared. She looks pissed.

The way Bruce had to lure her in, trick her into trusting him, again after almost two years of not speaking, he is not proud of.   
The night before, asleep against him on the roof, spent and exhausted – he had injected her with a paralytic – and literally carried her into the new GCPD headquarters in his arms. Alfred watched him, concern on his face and Gordon didn’t ask when Bruce gently placed Selina on the cot in the holding cell.

She had woken up in a frenzy of anger, her clawed gloves removed – all her weapons safely stored away in a safe. 

But it had to be done. 

*  
Harvey glances at Bruce, past Alfred, but speaks to Gordon.  
“You think she’ll talk to him?”  
Gordon sighs into his fist, watching her through the two way mirror.  
“Doesn’t look like she’s going to talk to anyone.”  
Bruce answers quietly “She’ll talk to me.”

*  
When he goes in she looks at him evenly and follows him with steely eyes until he sits down in front of her. Her face blank, expectant.

He says it, because he needs to say it “I’m sorry, Selina.”

She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t betray any other emotion than utter contempt.  
“It was the only way I could get you here. I had to.”

She raises an eyebrow, almost in amusement and he sits back. At least that is some sort of response.

“I know you’re angry.”

She smiles, a wry smile. She almost looks seventeen again. “You’re such a prince, B.”

It has been a long road.

There is no time to waste and there is no point in beating around the bush with her. “Selina, this is it. I promise you. This is your last chance.”

He can feel Harvey pacing behind the two way mirror. He knows that Harvey would like nothing more than to just put a bullet in Selina’s head – a short term solution is good enough for them.

And Bruce didn’t have to say it, for them to know, that if they want to kill Selina, they are going to have to kill him first.

It’s been a long road, but some things will never change.

She sighs and stretches as far as she can with the cuffs constricting her to the table. “So I’m guessing this is about the redwater.”

Bruce watches her, straining to keep his voice even “So those explosions, all of them, those were yours?”

She doesn’t look at him when she answers, easily, without a trace of remorse “Girl’s got to make a name for herself these days. Its how it is out there.” She shrugs and again, they are seventeen again, chatting across the kitchen table at Wayne Manor. He shakes it off.

“Do you know how many people died, Selina?”

She tilts her head at him, her hoodie sliding softly from her curls. “I can count.”

There is a slam against the window behind them - Harvey. She lowers her eyes and smiles. 

“Actually I don’t. I don’t get the Gotham Daily in my street.” 

There is amusement in her voice, and it sends a chill to his bones. Last night, when he cupped her face in his hands, forgave all her sins, pleaded with her to fight with him, on his side – and she agreed – as if she had been waiting for him to find her for all those years, last night it was his Selina, his Selina from years ago.   
The terrifying truth is, however, that this Selina, callous and calculating– he recognises her too. It is still his Selina, but it is the Selina he abandoned on the island, the Selina who, with all the hate and disappointment in her heart – he could no longer bear to be with. It is still his Selina. A bitter sadness swells inside of him, threatening to overwhelm him. He breathes out, raggedly “How can you not care, Selina? These people…”

She catches him, quick and even “Your people, Bruce. Not mine. Mine are still in the camps. So really, why should I care?”

The quip chips at his guard and his patience dwindles – he slams the table with his folded hands. He is not able to control the angry tremor in his voice “You can’t be this vindictive!”

But Selina is peaked now, wanting to play. She leans her chin on her upper arm, languidly; she looks up at him, her green eyes sharp – piercing. “We didn’t really get to talk much last night… How are things these days? How is Linda?”

He can imagine Alfred stiffening at the mention of his niece’s name.   
Bruce is going to have to navigate her deflections.

“Selina, please.”

Selina sits back and bites her bottom lip, in thought. He recognises the gesture, the habit – from when they were teenagers. “You gonna tell her about last night?”

When the war just started, after the black out, and after they first found each other again – when Gotham burned around them, but things were good, or at least better, between them, they used sex as a distraction - a way to forget the flames around them and enjoy each other emotionally and physically without guilt or the heaviness of commitment. The world was a different place then. Of course, as things do, that also changed later. 

Last night he used the memory of their past intimacy to snare her, as a trap. As a trick. He understands that she is angry. She’s hurt so she wants to hurt. Him, Linda, Alfred. So now, last night becomes her weapon.

There is a knock at the two way mirror and Selina’s eyes flick up. It’s Alfred, he’s sure, the knock is quick and irritated. She also knows, he can see it in the way she smiles. She gives a small wave to the mirror with cuffed wrist. 

“Hello Alfred.”

But right now is no time to fold. 

“Sure.”

Selina turns her attention back to him, her smile not leaving her face and she pulls herself back up, shaking her curls free from the hoodie and they tumble to her shoulders. 

“You sure? She may get really mad, Bruce. And I’ve heard, those preppy British kinds, they can get downright nasty”

Bruce shrugs, gives a thin smile. He can’t afford to lose her interest, but he does need to cajole her back to the subject at hand.

“If I tell her, will you tell me about the redwater.”

She leans forward against the table again, her nails clicking the metal table as she considers. 

“Maybe.”

He plays right back. “No maybes, Selina.”

She laughs, happily, at his retort. “Oh, I have missed you, Bruce. I have missed you.”

Her laughter trickles down his spine and fills the room, airily. He remembers a day when they were nothing more than teenagers, her hand curling around his neck, her breath to his ear. That laugh. 

She sighs and he waits. Glancing at the two-way mirror, her expression changes, subtly, from light and playful mischief to something much darker. When she looks back at him, he can feel the change in the air.

It’s been a long road.

“But it doesn’t really matter, does it?”

“What doesn’t?”

“Whether she knows, whether he knows. Whether anyone knows. This. What was. It doesn’t matter, because it doesn’t matter to you. And if it doesn’t matter to you, what’s the point, right Bruce?”

He stares at her. He tries again, knowing that he is out of cards.

“Tell me about the redwater.”

She watches him, her eyes quiet. 

“Why did you kiss me last night? Why didn’t you just, I don’t know, shoot me with a dart or something. Why did you have to go that far?”

The question is fair. And to be fair, they did a lot more than kiss. He chooses his words carefully, but they still ring hollow – “I needed to be close to you.”

Behind him, he can imagine Alfred ready to punch his fist through the glass.

“Cruel. But then you always were.”

It hurts, hearing her say those words. But then, they were always harder on each other.

So he waits. Finally she looks away from him, looks at the glass, where he knows Gordon is waiting for anything, literally anything on redwater. But she is looking at herself, at her own green eyes.

“Strange came up with it. The compound. He explained it to me once, a few years ago, before I killed him.”

Bruce stiffens at her casual confession. Her eyes drifts from the mirror back to him, vacant, devoid of any feeling.

“It’s simple, really, because the redwater is everywhere by now. The river. The sewers. The pipes. Could even be in Harvey’s coffee.”

Behind the two way mirror Bruce hears a cup shatter.

Selina leans in, her voice low. “The kicker is, that the redwater? On top of being a kickass accelerant to the explody micro-cell? Is a sonar conductor.”

Bruce feels the hair on his neck stand on end and as if she can read his mind, Selina smiles.

“Strange was one fucked up, dude.”

Bruce’s mind races with the new information and she smiles at his frown.

“Trigger word, tiger. Said under a certain decibel a whole chain of events are set off…and then…blammo”

At that moment the door to the interrogation room flies open and Gordon has a gun pointed at Selina’s head. 

“NO!”

Bruce jumps up and pushes himself in between the gun and Selina as Harvey tries to wrestle back Gordon.

Selina, not moving a muscle, stares calmly at the commotion in front of her.

“Shoot her, she can’t trigger any more bombs, easy.”

Bruce bites back “You think she’d be stupid enough to work alone?”

Gordon is beside himself but Harvey manages him back.

Selina chuckles. “Bruce, wow. I feel for you.”

As Harvey pulls Gordon out of the interrogation room Bruce slams his palms on the table.

“What do you want, Selina? What? You hold the entire Gotham at ransom for what? WHAT?”

“Not Gotham, Bruce. Just your island.”

And of course she is right. The explosions have been located away from the camps, away from the remnants of the Narrows, the mainland.

He sighs, defeated. “Selina. What do you want?”

She doesn’t answer right away but her eyes, wide with amusement at his outburst, trail to her wrists.

“I want… out of these cuffs. They hurt.”

He sits down.

It has been a long road and he is looking at a woman he would have died for once, a woman he loved so desperately, since they were children, whom he would have given his world for. This woman who has turned into something so complex, so disturbing, and yet who still looks at him with the same eyes of the first girl he ever kissed.

He looks away from her and shakes his head at the situation, the hopelessness of it. Her voice lilts with feign concern. “What’s wrong, baby? Can’t finish what you started?”

He growls out “I never started this.”

But he did. He knows he did. 

When they were twenty two, when Gotham had just started to rise from its grave again. Bruce waited for Selina on the roof of the building they were squatting in , he waited for hours and when it became too late, his concern beating at chest, she slipped over the railing, bounded to his arms and he held her, smoke and dust in her hair. “They’re setting up camps, Selina. The army is here.”   
And she looked at him, for a second her eyes narrowed, as if she couldn’t believe what he was saying – but then he realised, it wasn’t surprise or relief, it was shock, abject horror at the happy tone of his announcement. She was shaking, afraid, and angry – her arms dropping from his side. “You can’t…you can’t be this naïve Bruce… Camps?” 

She didn’t follow. She resisted. He resisted. And they were both wrong. And yes, for the sake of a united Gotham he started a war with her, a war in which she never had the upper hand, until the explosions, until now.

She watches him battle it out in his mind, watches him concede.

“So you let me go, now.”

His heart thuds cold and dull. There is no other way.

He glances at the two way mirror. He nods. His nod is met by a thunderous slam that shudders their reflections – they disperse and re-emerge. 

“Don’t be so sad, Bruce.” 

Selina’s voice is soft, teasing.

“Next time maybe you win.”


End file.
